Motivation and Education

At times, at almost all times in my life I find it really difficult to intrinsically motivate myself to do things I’d rather not do. These types of things include doing homework, raking the same leaves over and over, or being in a sport which I continually get frustrated with. (I don’t want this blog post to seem like me whining and if at any point it is STOP reading.) It is just when I’m thinking about doing these things that I find there is no motivation for me to perform this action. I lose face in school when my teachers act like asses and I don’t want to be in their class. Why should students have to bear poor teachers because they shouldn’t? I’m very fortunate this year to have some absolutely great teachers, but in the past I have had some bad ones. There is no excuse for a student if they are being behaved that they should have to hear a teacher going in a rant. I hope I haven’t led this off topic too much, but I brought this up because I’m usually not motivated in school and the only thing that gets me through the day is the idea that this one day closer to summer and that now I can relax. Luckily, I have had some unusually great motivation this term to get things done as I will get to have a motorcycle in the next couple of weeks if I stay out of trouble and keep my grades up. Noticeably my grade point shot up in the last two terms when the motorcycle was promised to me (4.1 during fall and 4.4 during the winter trimester). I think another thing I struggle with in motivation is that of the long old statement of students saying that they should be paid to go to school, this is an incredibly ignorant statement to say. Yet there is some truth in this bold statement, why should we waste our time in learning skills that we have no use for in the real world. I’m not going to be a biologist and only a very minute minority are going to be yet I have spent two years already in my high school studying it for the entire year. I think this is a reason America is behind in education as we are not tailoring it to teach students specialized skills in job career options of their choice. This I think has been signaled by American jobs and industry going over seas, and in the current economic situation that we are in.